The present invention relates to a chilled food storage area for a refrigerated appliance. The present invention further relates to a food storage area that is chilled by cold humid air taken from near the evaporator.
Appliances having one or more refrigerated compartments (e.g., refrigerator compartment for fresh foods, freezer compartment for frozen foods, etc.) are generally known. It is also generally known to provide an additional chilled food storage area (e.g., “crispers”) to such appliances. Known chilled food storage areas are typically located in a refrigerator compartment (for fresh foods) and receive chilled air from a freezer compartment so that the food storage area is maintained at a temperature less than the rest of the refrigerator compartment. However, such chilled food storage areas have several disadvantages including the use of dry air from the freezer to cool fresh foods such as vegetables, or use of complex multi-housing arrangements intended to keep the dry freezer air from directly contacting the food within the food storage area. Also, known refrigerators typically provide the food storage drawers at the bottom of the refrigerator compartment, and typically introduce the chilled air at the top of the refrigerator compartment. In such known arrangements, the air that ultimately cools the crisper drawers has an increased in temperature from when the evaporate first cooled it.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide an appliance that has separate refrigeration and air circulation systems for the refrigerator and freezer compartments so that a food storage area can be provided chilled humid air rather than dry chilled air. It would also be advantageous to provide a chilled food storage area that receives air directly from the evaporator so that it was cooler than air that it would otherwise receive from the main air supply duct. It would be desirable to provide a chilled food storage area for refrigerator having one or more of these or other advantageous features. To provide an inexpensive, reliable, and widely adaptable chilled food storage area that avoids the above-referenced and other problems would represent a significant advance in the art.